What´s my role?

The Mennonite Central Comitte has sent us here to ¨demonstrate God´s love by working among people suffering from poverty, conflict, oppression, and natural disasters." We are charged to create "mutually transformative relationships" That sounds great on paper, but when we're all covered in cement and the beneficiary of the system comes up with an idea completely contrary to where I was going.... What do I do? What’s my role?

We’re constantly referred to as tecnicos, which means I should have some technical knowledge of what we´re doing, and comparatively I usually do. I have read the books on building latrines, pouring cement, and design of water systems. I’m even building a dry latrine and roof-capture water system in my patio so that I can daily interact with the technologies that we’re advocating. However, the way they get things done here often gets the best of me. What’s my role?

As foreigners coming in with our light skin, resources, and college degrees (masters is finished now!!), we by default get to make a lot of decisions. To initiate a water system, the people come to us seeking resources and guidance. What should be my role in the water system? To make sure every part is up to code as the book would have us do it, or to give them ownership in what we’re putting together so that years down the road when something breaks, they have the confidence, the knowhow to fix it themselves?

I hate doing more in one step that might lead to even more work for me or someone else in a future step. I would often rather sit back and think about how to solve the problem than try something that might not work – when I was building my electric car you could often find me on a Saturday afternoon sitting in the truck, pondering where that 18th battery was going to fit… But when the cement is drying or people are supporting a heavy weight and the work has to be done, what's my role? Do I spend time trying to get my ideas across to save them labor or do I accept their ideas, and use my imagination to understand how everything will be just fine with their idea – it almost always is.

An example – We were putting the roof on a latrine – 3 sheets of fiber-cement and the owner had the idea to drill all the holes before we put the sheet of fiber atop the rafters. While I’m no carpenter, I can usually hold my own with handtools, but as I looked at the materials we were working with, I knew it couldn’t be done – with warped tree branches for rafters, we just couldn’t be exact enough for all 6 holes in the rafters to line up with all 6 holes in the fiber board. So I protested, but with a quick look from Cassie, held my tongue from saying anything further. And I was right, we had to redrill 2 holes. What would my further protest have gained? Maybe saved 5 minutes of pleasant work, and the educated guy with the resources got to force his decision. As it was, the owner saw that we had to re-drill, and made the decision on the next one to wait until the sheet was up to drill the holes exactly through the material into the rafter.
I could go on, there are plenty of examples where I’ve assumed I knew best, but luckily held my tongue at the right moment to both give the person ownership in the project, and often learning something myself.

The one additional complicating factor is that there is a pervasive mentality that no project will succeed without resources from outside the comunity. I often observe problems with simple solutions using the resources that are already in place, like simple maintenance, but the people would like a grand solution with bricks, cement, more technical thinking. We try to combat this tendency with more capacitation to fix the problem with the reources available - but that sometimes takes a lot of time and depends on the community all pulling in the same direction - not always easy.

So I´m learning that at times I do need to speak up and protect the resources entrusted to me and aid in the capacitation of the community to fix problems themselves long after we´re gone. But if it's just a matter of a little more work to give them the chance to steer the resources, the fruit of which they’ll be living with, sometimes I need to just be quiet, work and learn.

Carnaval!

Hi all, we are finally rested up after Carnaval. It´s of course the holiday to celebrate the day before Ash Wednesday and lent – and in general Latin America knows how to party on Mardi Gras like New Orleans only wishes it could. For the holiday our sleepy little town swelled to triple its normal size – 3 visitors came up from Santa Cruz to add to the fun for us and to escape the city where Carnaval can get a little out of hand.

On Sunday afternoon, there was a parade of 8 floats that went around and around the town plaza for over an hour. Parades for Carnaval include an element I´ve never seen in a parade before - the people in the parade and the crowd are involved in a waterbaloon and spray-foam fight the entire time. Each group of 30-50 folks decorated a truck, and danced behind it to the tune of their own mariachi band. A couple groups had horse riders running about and attempting tricks. One guy had a guitar that he would play intermittently when he wasn’t making his horse rear up on its hind legs. Other riders were trying to get their horses to do the same with the only effect of really scaring us that were sitting on the curb. There were prizes for the best float, best dancing, and best music. We got invited to share in one group’s prize of 50lbs of potatoes and 5 lbs of cheese.

On the second day, the drinking really got going, and each group that was in the parade danced around town as people sitting at their houses offered them drinks for a little performance. It was a little crazy for us, so we headed out to Nathan´s place – the other worker in the Moro Moro that lives about 8km away. You see us here on the way out of town stopping at the basketball court with probably the best view in the world - looking out to the West over the Andes. We enjoyed a nice hike and some quiet before heading back to the ruckus. You canLater in the day a band of 30 folks mounted on horseback were running through and then out of town, only to come swarming back through. It really felt like an old Western town for a while – cars were cleared out of the parade route and the smell of hot horses and leather would drift through now and then.

On the third day, things were quieting down, so we walked out of town to enjoy a ch’alla (party to bless the purchase or achievement of something) for a cow barn that MCC helped build. The chicas from Santa Cruz were getting all the attention and could hardly rest between songs, as the suitors lined up for the next dance. The mariachi played and the milk (with a little spike) flowed freely. The tradition of a chálla involves a couple hours of drinking and dancing followed by a blindfolded expert searching for the right spot to dig a sacrificial hole by walking around with a machete until the earth “draws it in”, and then digging a hole and adding food, coca and alcohol, for the PachaMama’s blessing (mother earth). The highlight of the party was the topping of this hole with a rock. As soon as it was time, people chanted “have the Macho do it.” So they put a leather rope around the neck of the guy who served as the expert earlier, and walked him over to a rock. The macho got down on his hands and knees, and with the help of another guy to hold the rock on his back, proceeded to buck his way across the field, with the owner jerking the leather rope. The mariachi started up again and we danced over the spot, avoiding the cow poop, and called it a day. Our visitors went home with a nice hat won with a kiss and a shirt from one of the dancing group earned with a shy “maybe” when he wrote his phone number on the pocket.

It’s quite a time to be alive in BO!

A week in the life...

Hello friends and family, Cassie here.
After a few phone conversations with family in which I couldn't think of any news to report, and then looking at my calendar which already has most days this week filled up, I decided to write a post to give you all an idea of what it is that we do with ourselves all the time.

Sunday:

a.m. meeting in a community about an hour's walk from Moro Moro. My role will be to discuss how to advance on a project in which 27 families want to build dry latrines, and hopefully to plan a workshop on homemade fertilizer. Mostly, though, I will be trying my hardest to understand what on earth is going on, as these people know each other really well and seem to understand even when three people are talking at once.

Afternoon on the square helping with the church bake sale. Also, we're hoping to track down three or four different people who usually come into town for market day so we can plan different work project's throughout the week.

Monday:

Trip to Vallegrande (nearby larger town) to do the following: waste hours on the internet (first priority, of course); visit electric company to figure out options for running electricity to a water pump that will serve 7-8 families with water; visit local agricultural research organization; do some shopping at the hardware store.

On the way to Vallegrande, we hope to find the leader of one of our water projects so we can arrange sand delivery.

Tuesday:

Cassie to a community called T'arco, where we have funds to do a water project this year but have only begun planning, then on to another nearby community where we're trying to get to the pipe-laying stage of a water project. In the afternoon, I hope to meet with some local high school kids to talk about plans for an eco-challenge competition that they thought up and want to hold in April. I also need to talk to a guy from another institution that works in the area about finding chickens to buy so that some folks can cook for a workshop we're hosting together in two weeks. Andy will be doing some agri-stuff all day.

Wednesday:

Both us of are going to separate locations to help some folks with their latrines. I'll go from there to another community to try to gently explain to a guy why we cannot pretend his neighbors don't exist and exclude them from the water project we were planning to do for him. It will probably not be fun for me.

Afternoon meeting with some folks in town about the local library. We're also hoping to convince the school director to let us organize some field trips to take the kids to see various sources of water problems in the area.

Thursday:

We're crossing our fingers for this day. We have plans to cap a spring in a community where there's been some conflict between the future beneficiaries and people that own the land where the spring sits. The agreement is written and signed, and on multiple different occasions we've been told by the owners that they're all for it. Then, yesterday as we sat eating our lunch an old lady who is among the group of people who owns the land approached us and told us that she'd changed her mind and said over and over again "I'm not giving it to them. It's not to my advantage." Then, we talked to her son the very next day, and he said go for it. So....we're not really sure what to do with that yet. Considering that the lady's daughter and four small grandchildren are among those that stand to benefit, and that the community will probably use about 20% of the water that's available even in the dry season, we're having a hard time being understanding of her concerns. All I know is that we will probably leave the house that morning with knots in our stomachs, anticipating a struggle. We'll be praying that both our Spanish skills and persuasive skills hold out for this one.

Friday:

No fixed plans yet, but this evening a group of 4 young women will hopefully arrive from the city to spend the Carnaval holiday with us. They are MCC workers who volunteer for a year of service. They're about half-way through their terms and want to see Moro Moro and what we do here. Hopefully we can show them a good time.

Saturday:

Peach harvest! A farmer that Andy has become friends with invited us to help him and take home as many peaches as we can carry. Hopefully with our four visitors we can do some serious harvesting.

As we've already come to expect, maybe about 60% of these plans will actually come to pass. We'll let you know how it goes!